Matthew
Carefully makes his “debut,” backed by a community balloon
of collaborators

By
Josh Potter

Discreetly,
Matthew Loiacono adjusts a setting on one of the various
electronic whatsits he carries to performances in a red
vintage suitcase. Casually, he taps a button and a frantic
drum sample skitters out of the Caffe Lena PA system.
His head begins to bob, unconsciously, and with a deft
turn he’s swapping his lute-like octave mandolin for his
trusty standard Kentucky mandolin, dexterously popping
the cable into its jack just in time to pluck out the
song’s opening riff, swaying. Diligently, the shaggy one-man
band stacks layer upon layer of mandolin textures with
a foot-operated loop pedal, patiently creating a nest
of sound for his voice to settle into. Sweeping the mandolin
behind his back, he briskly snatches a second microphone
from the suitcase, punches another button, and records
a high harmony for the lyric he’s already looped. Gradually,
he builds a chorus of four-part harmony, eyes closed,
crooning, but just as soon as it’s established he turns,
abruptly, perhaps even maniacally, and slashes the whole
thing down with a fuzzy, distorted mandolin solo. When
the song ends, he steps forward to the microphone, sheepishly
half-curtsies, and quips that when he wrote that last
one he never thought he’d have to play it live. But this
is a CD-release show, “so thanks for humoring me,” he
says, graciously.

Loiacono is a man of many adverbs. Restlessly, he’s made
a habit of starting new projects long before the last
one gets cold. As a songwriter, the former Kamikaze Heart
has sharpened his talent by posing conceptual challenges
for himself: 2008’s Kentucky was recorded exclusively
using mandolin; 2009’s Penny Riddle is a collection
of one-minute songs. He’s recorded an unreleased album
(Music for Message), a just-released album (Music
to Fall Asleep To), and a film soundtrack in progress.
In the late ’90s, he played some of his first local gigs
as a jazz drummer with Brian Patneaude and George Muscatello,
and since then has made a habit of playing with everyone
and anyone: knotworking, Bryan Thomas, various B3nson
projects, and most recently with Hunter Sagehorn of Alta
Mira as Rosary Beard. He’s improvised live film scores,
provided accompaniment to literary readings, and hauled
his red suitcase anywhere they’ll have him to perform
his solo act. All this, and Loiacono handles the day-to-day
business of Collar City Records, a curatorial task that,
he says, dovetails nicely with his personal music making,
and has situated him at the gravitational center of the
Capital Region music community.

“Carefully,”
however, is the way he’s chosen to describe these actions.
After years of hearing people mangle his last name and
feeling like it never stuck with his audience at out-of-town
shows, he’s swapped his surname for an adverb he says
both describes a personal tendency and a complex he’s
tried to overcome. Either way, it seems to describe the
manner in which Loiacono approaches both his personal
work and the community that supports him. For Community
Balloon, Loiacono’s latest concept-driven record,
the two became synonymous, suggesting that his new title
might have less to do with cautious restraint and more
with outward affection.

Every Wednesday morning for the past 82 weeks, Loiacono
has sent an e-mail newsletter to a list of friends, family
and fans. The Weekly Wahhh! started as a simple update
of the goings-on in Matthew Land (matthew-land.com, naturally),
e.g., tour dates and recording plans, but soon grew into
a bloglike avenue through which Loiacono was posting links
and videos and starting dialogue with his subscribers.
The list grew from 50 recipients to 250. “I’m really serious
about that list,” Loiacono says. “I never miss a week.
People come up to me and say, ‘I can’t wait for Wednesday.’”

The newsletter quickly evolved from a promotional tool
to its own kind of songwriting project. “I thought, why
not give people who had interest in the list something
new every week? Why don’t I get them in on the process?”
He started including one new track every week, specifically
written for the list. Not only did it keep recipients
engaged, it gave Loiacono a deadline to motivate for.
When the song well went dry sometime late last year, he
put out the call for ideas. Recipients were encouraged
to submit anything they thought would make for a good
song: lyrics, poetry, samples, chords, stories, photos,
ideas, challenges. Anything.

It became Loiacono’s task to cobble the ideas into coherent
songs. Although challenging, the concept wasn’t entirely
unprecedented in his work. When Loiacono first picked
up the mandolin in 1999 and began playing with the Kamikaze
Hearts, his role was that of the sideman, writing parts
that would complement and complete the songs written by
Troy Pohl and Gaven Richard. “I tried to unify things,”
he says. “If there was ever a point in the music where
things slowed down, I would try to write a part that was
repetitive and memorable. I love that role.”

This time, though, the song fragments would be tougher
to stitch together. Poems submitted by Alex Muro and Ben
Karis-Nix all made their way into songs (“The Age of Reason
II” and “The Old Stream” respectively), but other submissions
were more open-ended: photos, simple ambient samples,
the town of Poughkeepsie, lines like “made my life at
the top of the stairs,” hating James Joyce for being able
to precisely capture human emotion, suggestions like “how
about space nurses?” and simply “aubergine.” Some ideas
merged with others, some inspired original lyrics by Loiacono,
and some were discarded altogether. The strangest submission
may have been a long chunk of prose submitted by author
Rick Moody, which eventually became “A Description of
Things Rick Moody Could See From His Desk.”

“I’m
not like crusading for my community,” Loiacono says. “I
loved the stuff people sent in and loved trying to harness
that. After six or seven songs, it started to feel like
a record, and I got kind of obsessed with finishing it.”
By the end of the winter, he’d amassed enough material
this way for a proper LP. The finishing touch was “All
Day Long,” the only track for which Loiacono can claim
full authorship, and which contains the project’s lyrical
mission statement: “Since I started writing to you every
Wednesday in the morning, I’ve been holding up a candle
in my mitts to light/Picking out the best bits around
just to show you, hoping that you’ll come back and stay
awhile.”

The Community Balloon re lease show, last month
at Caffe Lena, was a rare occasion on which a good number
of Loiacono’s e-mail list recipients were assembled in
one space. He performed the album back-to-front, deferring
at times to members of the audience to tell the story
behind the ideas they had submitted. While it was exciting
and even “cathartic,” Loiacono says it was the hardest
program of music he’s ever had to play. This mostly has
to do with the unique technical considerations of how
he performs and the challenge of translating material
for the stage.

Loiacono’s work bridges a very 21st-century gap between
computer-era methodology and traditional instrumentation
and songwriting. On tape, this may be less apparent, as
anyone with ProTools and a decent microphone can track
a full, multi-instrument record all by their lonesome.
Re-creating the sonic complexity of these recordings live
is another story, though.

“The
kind of pop music I really dig starts with this repetitive
thing,” he says, “and then other elements get added to
it that change the whole feeling.” It’s a concept he refers
to as “cellular music,” and a passion he traces back to
when he first heard Arto Lindsay’s Mundo Civilizado.
“You’ve got repeating cells [simple motifs] that are doing
their thing and other cells that are interlocking or clashing.
You’re dropping them in and pulling them out. Then you’re
singing over it or playing.” The effect is strange and
slightly psychedelic. By performing something in real
time, isolating the cell with a loop pedal, and performing
something new on top, he’s literally altering the listener’s
perception of linear time, a technique not unlike some
techno, Steve Reich’s minimalist compositions or Indonesian
Gamelan—not to mention folks like Andrew Bird, Zach Deputy
and Keller Williams, who have popularized their own versions
of the craft.

This concept becomes tangible while watching Loiacono
perform. Unlike most electronic performers who risk alienating
an audience with the specialized knowledge of their gear,
and despite the mystery of Loiacono’s red suitcase, his
use of mandolin, guitar, banjo and voice gives the audience
a concrete reference for where his sounds are coming from,
even when the number of sounds coming from the stage exceed
the number of actions he’s performing. He says, “It’s
such a fine line between overdoing the looping stuff,
composing on the spot, and having people be engaged with
it.” Even harder, though, was figuring out how to build
many of his new songs live with the loop station. The
payoff is watching Loiacono navigate his equipment, carefully
constructing each tune in the manner of live painting
or sculpture.

“I
hope I’m putting forth something that’s intriguing,” he
says, “that people can go home and ruminate on. But I
don’t want it to be so heavy that it’s hard to get into.”
On this night, surrounded by the people that helped write
this music, the concern is less pronounced, but still
he admits, “When you’re playing alone, it’s hard to be
in that place” where you’re present, responding to more
than just yourself and the audience. “I also love the
opportunity to improvise and kind of wish I could be all
of that.”

Not surprisingly, this desire already has him working
on a song cycle for his next solo album, writing instrumental
tunes with Rosary Beard and scheming to start a new band
to satisfy his more raucous inclinations. And all this
manic activity might betray a bit of his new namesake.
“I’m trying to remind myself to not be so careful about
some things,” he says. “That’s kind of how I am, and maybe
I’m trying to get over that.”

ROUGH
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